For the Love of Katy Perry - Why Her Best Is Yet to Come

When Katy Perry sent Taylor Swift an actual olive branch, as a moment of truce, she wasn’t attempting to stay relevant, but instead, she was being as raw, real, vulnerable and transparent as can be, revealing that the stupid stuff doesn’t matter anymore to her, only the things that will build her and others up.

ABC’s reboot of American Idol did a lot for exposing the underbelly of Katy Perry’s personality, which if you’re not looking closely, you could miss.  But it also revealed Katy’s growth as a human being, which again, if you weren’t looking for it, might pass you by unnoticed.

Early in the season during auditions, David Francisco, a contestant from Nashville walked to the stage with help from crutches, and in tow with him was his fiancée; there for moral support and to hold his guitar.

While David played and sang, his fiancée looked on with a look that could only be explained as the deepest pride; love, and what made that look even more special, is that David’s fiancée was someone who came back into his life after he was hit by a car while riding a bike, a time when most would see a paralyzed man and perhaps stay away for the personal convenience of it, this woman wasn’t just in his life as a support but her look said everything.

Shortest Verse in The Book of Katy

And while he played, Katy Perry wept.

And then as the season progressed, Katy Perry would show her fun and flirtatious side as certain contestants with a look, or a style or the full package of that including the talent, would grab her attention and Katy would playfully engage in Flirt Land.

But as Idol got to its final shows and ABC was setting up for the Bachelorette with contestant Becca Kufrin during a cross promote, you could see an internal tug of war from Katy Perry who found Becca to be stunning. But despite kissing a girl and liking it, Katy fought off her urges to full on flirt and instead of declaring herself a candidate on the upcoming season of the Bachelorette; Perry proclaimed herself ‘taken’ and off the market.

Of the most endearing qualities a human being can have, self-discipline, transparency and authenticity are among the top ones that can draw us like a magnet into liking the personality of another.

I was first introduced to Katy Perry at 345 Hudson Street in New York City when I was programming Top 40 for CBS Radio.  What captivated me first was her sense of awareness intertwined with humor.  As I came to retrieve her and then-Capitol Records VP Dennis Reese from the security check-in area on the first floor, we made our way to the elevator where Katy noticed a young lady with a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup in her hand, to which she engaged, “I like you, you’re a rebel,” Katy said to this woman who was probably just trying to get to her job, “even though there’s a Starbucks attached to your building, you will go out of your way to get what you want, not what’s convenient.”

Whose Caffeine Is It Anyway

Because the girl hadn’t taken enough swigs of her coffee yet, she couldn’t fully appreciate the art that Katy was slingin’, the art of Improv not often seen at that level unless you were watching reruns of Whose Line Is It Anyway; and certainly not often at 8:30 in the morning.

As an appreciator of Improv and of Dunkin’ Donuts, I quickly became a fan of Katy Perry, and in the next two years I’d see her many times as her most successful album, Teenage Dream, spawned hit after hit.  She was always on, funny, kind and impressive as she begun remembering where she knew me from each time we’d run into each other.

But when Idol began with Katy as a judge, she was coming off of an album, Witness, which didn’t draw the same fanfare as Teenage Dream had, and as there were reports that the lackluster reaction from radio and the audience drove Katy into a depression, I was seeing glimpses of a human being who had yet to scratch the surface of the success she would soon see, because the woman who resorted to humor as both a skill and as an escape began resorting to reality.

The tears she cried during David Francisco’s audition were personal as much as they could have been professional.  Katy saw something in eyes of David’s fiancée, something that she desired more than anything else; love, raw, real and willing to fight through the hard parts of life for the victory, and David’s fiancée who was by his side when he went from paralyzed to walking was in it for the long haul.  That’s what love does.  It fights through everything.

Wuvvvvvv, True Wuvvvvvvvvvvv!!

It’s the opposite of what we saw when Katy and a contestant would flirt back and forth creating fun to watch TV but showing her go down easy street instead of protecting things that should be important in her life, the relationships of people who matter to her.

So, around the time of the finale, when Katy found her natural self, willing to be flirtatious with the Bachelorette, instead we got to witness her fighting her desires and ultimately winning that fight to protect home, and with that we saw the heart of a human we could fully relate to.

Since being married, my wife and I, for fun had what we would call a sexception in our relationship, the person we would be allowed to have a one night stand with without repercussions, and despite my wife’s sexceptions changing from Denzel to Blake Shelton to Mark Wahlberg, mine had stayed consistently on that pretty girl who made me laugh one morning on the way to the elevator.

But on that day when Katy made her personal relationship more important than everything else, my respect for her went through the roof and the fantasy went away, and I am thrilled that it did, because even though Denzel and Blake and Marky Mark are willing to injure the relationship between my wife and I, Kate Perry was not.

Can I Get A Witness?

Witness is not a failed album by Katy Perry.  It is a marked time in her life when she was guarded, not willing to be fully revealed, so another session with Max Martin seemed like the right choice at the time, and it probably was.  But like Bieber who began revealing that there is a greater “Purpose,” to life than fame, fans, drugs and money, it would be intriguing to see Katy Perry work with Theron “Neff-U” Feemster, who creates freedoms for artists to be themselves and reveal themselves as they create.

Witness will prove to be a necessary stepping stone for Katy, who when she continues to create from her heart, her hurts, her hopes, her happiness, and her dreams that dream beyond the puppy love of a teenager, will fuel a wellspring of songs that hit the world between the eyes at the perfect time.

Adele did it, and when she did, we drank it like it was water and we had just emerged from a twenty-day trek through the desert.  Katy’s day is coming, and when it does, her art will fill our cups to overflowing.